Expect to see Rooney in midfield for Everton from now on

It is very likely that Wayne Rooney’s days of playing as Everton’s #10 are behind him, even if he aspires to play until the age of 40 like his former Manchester United teammate Ryan Giggs.

In fact, as the last two games have shown, he seems well-suited to playing as a defensive midfielder in a 4-2-3-1 when paired up with a strong-tackling monster like Idrissa Gueye, with the caveat that the opponents are themselves not loaded at the midfield position (i.e non-top-six opposition).

Rooney acknowledges this, and that it might be the best way to make Sam Allardyce eat his words about not playing him and Gylfi Sigurdsson together.

“The one thing which stays is my attitude to playing, my attitude to win, but of course you change and adapt your game and that’s what I feel I’ve done over the last few years.

”Two years ago, I thought my best position to play was midfield, and that’s starting to happen now.”

In the interview with evertonfc.com, Rooney did talk up his current manager though -

“We have obviously got better results since Sam came in. Our home form has been very good and it is now about whether we can sort out our away form.

“At the start to the season, the fixtures were very tough. We were conceding too many goals. It was my first few games back and it was tough to put my finger on why that was happening.

“We had to get it together quickly or otherwise we would have been fighting relegation - and it would have been tough to get out of that.”

Photo by Mark Robinson/Getty Images

Wazza did have options in the summer when he was strongly linked with making a move to the Chinese Super League from Manchester United, but chose to return to his boyhood club.

“I knew that coming back to Everton was more pressure - that’s what I wanted. I wanted to prove myself again to the Everton fans and to try to help this club move forward and win silverware.

”I think it was the perfect fit for me and hopefully in the next two or three years we can do that.”

He recently tried out a stint on Monday Night Football as a presenter, and came off very well.

“What people see on the pitch... they don’t see your qualities as a person. To have knowledge about football you have to learn it. How do you get better? How do you move forward? If you want to get into management, you only get better by studying.”

The veteran has certainly shown with his team-leading 11 goals that the Blues didn’t make mistake bringing him back, and here’s hoping he can continue to stay hungry and perform at the high levels that he has set the bar at.